Absurdly Powerful Student Council
This troper's student council isn't really that powerful, but they're just powerful. They're capable of holding two parties a year, and interrogating those who have been stealing air-con knobs for the past few weeks. * Real life example: I served on my school's Student Faculty Administration, which acted as my school's legislature, with our only limitations being a rarely used veto power by the principal and the fact that we were about as productive as a real legislature. Among the things we passed in my senior year was a bill that allows students who take AP tests to take excused absences for the whole day, which the principal had to veto and institute as unofficial policy because it might have caused some students not to meet state requirements for minimum class hours per year. That's right, we overruled state regulations. * Possible example: The Pail and Shovel Party, a University of Wisconsin-Madison student body governing group, promised to bring the Statue of Liberty to campus if elected. They did, in a manner; the head and torch of a full-scale replica of the Statue of Liberty soon protruded through the ice of Lake Mendota. It fell during shipping, they claimed. One of the two leaders went on to help write the TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000. * Here in Guadalajara, Mexico, we have the FEU (University Students Federation), the public university's student council. You know when someone knows the people inside when they pass all their subjects with top honors after arriving drunk to every single class, when they have zero absences after not showing up at every single class, when they turn in a blatantly ghostwritten thesis and get away with it. Piss them off, and your only chance of getting your degree will be at one of the Jesuit universities, known for being like Switzerland: TrueNeutral Neutral Neutral, open to everyone and anyone. Those who manage to enter the student council somehow manage to live like millionaires despite coming from a medium-class family -- now imagine where they get their gold from, IfYouKnowWhatIMean -- and by the time they get their degree, they often end up as prominent members of the ruling political parties. Now imagine how Mexican politicians are... * In the midst of a controversy over using "We Are The Champions" by Queen as a high school graduation song, some of our student body decided to adopt a spirit of solidarity and nominated the song as our graduation song, too. It won the vote handily. Our student council then quietly ignored the vote and adopted "End of the Road" by Boys II Men. * University students in Quebec are unionized, so that the first day of class involves negotiating a contract with the professor - what exactly will be taught, when the exams fall, how much they'll be worth, etc - and having both parties signing off on it. From that point nobody can make changes to the syllabus without both sides signing off on the changes. 90% of the students just sign the syllabus they're handed, but a small core of politically active students takes this very seriously. In the past five years students have gone on strike 3 times demanding tuition cuts, shutting down the universities entirely for a large part of the semester because professors are not legally allowed to teach anyone who shows up. The strike votes always pass with a ridiculously small turnout because only Political Science students - exactly the kinds of people who get elected to Student Council - bother to show up to the meetings. * In Brazil, the student councils only have that power in the Universities, but somewhat of a subversion happens when in Elementary, Middle and High, the school's more popular students always get chosen for this, since they have such power to make even school principals not believe in someone, if they want. Oh, boy, they have. * When this troper was at A&M, every dorm had a hall council and everyone living on campus that wasn't in the Corps of Cadets was a part of the RHA. The end result was that the hall councils had a ridiculous amount of power by being able to bring or discourage students from going to major events. ** In many colleges, RHAs and their analogs have significant amounts of power. This troper has been on two RHA committees relating to University Housing Policy--one for transgender housing policies and one for health and safety inspections. The latter committee included RHA's advisor, and actually got the housing office to adopt their protocol. The president of My RHA also meets regularly with the University President to discuss concerns. My school RHA is funded by a leadership fee paid by every on campus resident, which gives our RHA thousands of dollars to put into leadership conferences and on-campus events. * Real Life Example: At my school, http://www.sudval.org/ the Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, MA, day to day disciplinary matters are handled by a Judicial Committee run by two student clerks and five students serving in a capacity similar to Jury Duty, with only one member of the school's adult staff as the sixth member on any given day. All major disciplinary matters (such as suspensions and expulsions) and the overall running of the school is handled by a weekly school meeting, run in the format of a traditional New England town hall meeting, where the students have as much voting power as the staff, the chairman for which is always a student (who even signs the staff's paychecks). And at the end of every school year, the staff, who aren't contractually guaranteed more than one year of employment at a time, have to go up for election as to whether or not their contract will be renewed the next year, which only the students can vote in. ** Aw, reading this just warms my bones. Also, I want to point out that I was wrong about one thing (at least at the school in Framingham): The School Meeting Chairman signs the staff's contracts, not their paychecks. Still a huge responsibility, though. * In New Zealand, all university students pay student union membership dues with their fees, and membership in the Student Union is compulsory. Yes, compulsory. No matter how stupid the union is. No matter if you're on a satellite campus and unable to attend (and therefore vote in) union meetings, and have no access to most of the facilities your dues are supposedly paying for. Even if your 'representatives' (which you didn't actually vote for, as you weren't a student the previous year, when the election was held) deface the university's works of art, use part of their operating budget to call psychic hotlines, or get drunk and urinate in the street (all real examples from just one year of a particular group's misrule)... you still have to pay your dues. I really resented it. * In California's public universities, membership in the local student union is all but compulsory, and is even assessed out of one's fees. Our student government, however, runs things pretty decently. * My high school elects a 'class council' every year, which includes the Monitor, Asst. Monitor, and five or six prefects. They are in charge of everything, including class fees, class decoration, and class parties. This troper vividly remembers how our class, 2B, is pitted against 2U in everything... just because the Monitors don't like each other. * While not quite a council, the class reps in My college....well, they can organise a party for their class and are given tokens which can be exchanged for free alcohol. That's power from where this troper is sitting. * My high school student council is a subversion: their only real power is planning student activities such as rallies and school dances. He should know; he was on it himself for a year, as the class secretary and treasurer. Also, the class president was BrilliantButLazy. * This troper wishes the school council he was part of was powerful, maybe we could have stopped our school from being closed. * My school council is pretty powerful; we've managed to convince the governors to organize for an entire new school building to be built because no one likes the current ones. Sadly, we can't change the teachers' minds on the one thing we think matters; here, girls can't wear trousers. At all. Even if it's freezing cold. That's right, the teachers will have a new school built, install hot chocolate machines and make it so that no one has to take languages for a GCSE subject, but they won't let us wear trousers. * ABSOLUTELY PLAYED STRAIGHT in my old school. Put simply, politics were quite a big deal, bigger than usual. We had student parties, from the Democrats to the Republicans to the Student's Rights... and also the Greens-Animal Rights, Marxist, Stalinist, Socialist Zionist, Indian-Pakistani Alliance (about half the school was from India), and School Pride (Fascist). There was a miniature 'parliament', with the homeroom electing two members to the lower house and one to the higher one. There were intercom debates before class, and a school assembly every month. Entering Junior year, the Democrats and Republicans naturally had a choke hold on most things. Through some good old-fashioned chessmastery, a few of us made those two parties *disband*, paving the way for a multiple party congress. I was elected to Treasurer running on School Pride, endorsed by Socialist Zionist and Greens, opposed by everyone else. Senior year, I narrowly lost President to an IPA, but took Foreign Delegate Secretary in return for not making my party FILIBUSTER EVERY BILL... we just filibustered most of them, in return for abolishing the Marxist and Stalinist parties and permanently removing their chairs from the Council... yeah... We had fun... ** As for duties, we were originally responsible for almost nothing besides dances, but I wanted to see how much of a chessmaster I was, so I made us responsible for things like the morning announcements (to be done by a School Prider- no way he can add bias), or maybe putting up posters (a few got lost somewhere, weird...), and painting the hallways instead of the art class (it just so happened the art club was 100% Indian-Pakistani, the main opposition...). Of course, all this was expensive, so as treasurer, I had to cut funds on things that weren't as important, or request more funds. I did both, cutting on things like the art projects, thus disbanding the art club, and forcing other organizations to fine people every month to stay open. Just not the School Pride one. So yeah... Sadly, my party also ticked off the LGBT Alliance, even though I personally, being a member, prevented a formal opposition. This caused them to complain to the Greens, which instead sided with the IPA... Causing my defeat. Yeah. Shit was real. * The student council at I's school just seems to be getting more powerful each year. * While not technically student council in my junior high school and high school (they were in the same complex but on different campuses) there was court, parliament and school councils - consisting of, equally, students, teachers (technically - members of stuff) and parents (in council and parliament there are much smaller number of graduate as well). The court have the power (an I know about the case to have it executed) to overrule the punishment imposed by school director, council have the power to vote of no confidence for the director and in one of the schools in complex there was group of students which wanted to do it (although it was overruled by parents and teachers). So it is somehow play straight as the government have power and subverted as one of prime ministers (i.e. head of school council) was convicted at least once by the school court and it is not technically student-only. * Subverted with My Student Council and played straight with his class office. I was a member of my Student Council (school wide) and my Class Office (class wide only). Student Council was almost comically powerless, but Class Office was what you made of it, and we consolidated more and more power every year. By the time we graduated, my fellow class officers and I were sitting in with the principal and superintendent, dissolving dance committees (ineffective and wasteful), and imposing our will in general. It would have been a problem were it not for the fact that we raised a ton of money by graduation. * Real life example: My university's student government (SGA) has control over the money that goes to the student organizations. We're talking a quarter of a million dollars, here. The president of the SGA decided he wanted to be the, I dunno, AGodAmI god of the university, and somehow managed to fire most of the senate and replace it with his cronies, as well as rewrite the constitution to make it legal to do so. After that, he started declaring various organizations ineligible to receive funds. Professionals from the Student Government Association of America had to be called in to sort it out. * My faculty. full time. To explain a bit, there's one representative per class and one per career (and yeah, a student can be BOTH), each elected by their own class/career, which forms the General Council of Representatives. below them is the Student Coucil, who manages the student's funds(scholarship funds, etc.), all Student Coucil members get scholarships and free food from the cafeteria, get to call Council of Reps meetings and yeah, organize school festivals. They can also help fund trips out of town as long as it's school related, if you know who to sweet talk you can get many other benefits. though it was a VERY big deal when the last Student Council President (and the one before him) was caught stealing funds, finally being expelled from the UNIVERSITY. * Is student council has a choke-hold on school politics/events/and everything else that I would bother to care about. As a freshman it was known pretty well throughout the school the student council was more powerful than the administration, and that if we had a judiciary branch, the school would become more and more like our good old government. They run everything, the only thing they don't control is the damned standards and the financial bureaucracy that the school goes through to get funding. Hell, the students fear the STUDENT COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE, NOT THE PRINCIPAL! God help our lives if we had parties. * My school has no student council, but each class has two representatives. Those two can decide exactly what to do with the money the class gets, even though said money is actually for field trips. They can decide to open a shop in the school's lobby, change the time when their class gets food in the cafeteria, and last year the representatives of my class made the school change our Russian teacher. ** The above troper is here again after a year. She just found out that there IS a student council, consisting of the two representatives of every class, who have their own three representatives. Turns out that they changed the dates of some holidays (the ones that the school is supposed to decide on), lenght of the brakes, pretty much everything about the school festival, and almost got us new sport equipment (the "almost" is because the education ministry didn't want to give our school the money). Apearantly, we never hear of them because only those three students are allowed to decide. * Completely subverted at My high school. Not only was he Student Counselor representing his high school in the University's so-called "Honorable Counsel" (which itself was powerless to the rector and a few committees), but since his President did nothing, was the only one who showed up at the Student Activities meetings held at the rectory, and was the only one who seemed to be interested in getting new things done. Despite being on a first-name basis with the principal and being friends with said principal's daughter, the only thing he got to do was organize the Miss High School Pageant. With much help from classmates, of course. Any other notion, suggestion, or issue discussed with the principal (and that was jumping over several teachers' heads, to their annoyance and quite honestly my pleasure), they were usually shot down for not being 'priorities' (i.e. part of the 'ruling faction' of teachers' agenda). Not even ideas pushed by the Student Activities department themselves. That said, when I saw a limo drive up to the events hall and a fashion designer step out of it with one of his classmates (she got the designer to be on the judge's panel), that was quite a proud moment. I dare not say "played straight", since as the actual student counsel we had pretty much no authority whatsoever, but individually, I did eat with teachers during recesses (ordering their food through their window at the cafeteria), and got coffee from the teacher's lounge; barely did homework and never took notes. I think that was more a result of being on good terms with the teachers, though. * At My parents' high school, in the 1940s, the principal barred student council candidates from doing anything remotely amusing or creative for their speeches (he even stopped one candidate from LampshadeHanging standing on a soapbox). In response, the council, and other disaffected students, called an immediate general student strike (much like in TheSimpsons episode "The President Wore Pearls"), which got media coverage and embarrassed the principal into meeting with the student council and making concessions on the issue. * My Class Officers are ineffectual. This is because the only people seemingly allowed to run are in an ASB class. All they seem to have power over is designing t-shirts and deciding on school dances. However, it is feasible they could seize more power if they tried. (Our principal doesn't actually do anything. The school is verging on anarchy behind the scenes). * The student council at my school actually has power over the budgets some clubs and school organizations have, and I'm convinced that they actually run the entire government, considering how diabolical some of them are. * At my school, the Associated Student Body (ASB) has a pretty decent amount of power. They decide on the school's dances, where to allocate funds, football issues, and most importantly, decide the ultimate fate of certain clubs. Of course, since ASB is run by a bunch of complete jerkasses, they only ever do anything for their own gain. For homecoming, they've begun the trend of making every club create a float to march in a parade, or else they aren't legally considered to be a club. They also organized a fundraiser for every club, where they made every club pay a huge fee to sell items AND were obligated to take 10-15 percent of our funds. Not only this, but we have to give them the money to "store" to begin with, and usually they just end up embezzling the clubs' funds anyways. Speaking of which, transferring funds or setting up events takes MONTHS to occur, so most of us don't even bother with consulting ASB for anything like that. Also, they themselves are able to sell food/drinks EVERY SINGLE DAY after school, whereas every other club (and sport) has to go through a convoluted 3-week-long process to reserve a day to sell anything, which can't be the same product as ASB. So basically our school government is a giant corrupt bureaucracy. * This troper's college has the student government, which has paid positions and controls a $700,000-a-year budget. Organizations and clubs within that have smaller, but still substantial, budgets that can contain thousands of dollars. The government is run exactly like a mini version of the federal government, with senate and executive divisions, and the school's policy can be and is revised on a yearly, if not monthly, basis by this organization with little to no input from the school administration. * Well, 2 years ago, we had a normal Student Council amd a principal. (e.g. our school, was the only one who never got a snow day, even if all other schools in town were closed... Our principal lived right next to school, so he could come and so we all had to come. Even if that meant wading through half a meter high snow.) We didn`t pass a day without getting annoyed by one of his dim-witted decisions. And then the day came, when he made it impossible choose PE as an A-level, by claiming not enough people were interested (There were 20 people interested in the PE course, while there were only 8 people interested in french. The French course however was not rejected) Now our student-council took action: first it complained to the guidance counselor, then to the parent`s council, GettingCrapPastTheRadar then they published an article in our school magazine... And then they wrote a reader`s letter to the local newspaper. It was published. The chairman of the parents`s council read it and wrote a reader`s letter himself. They both were relatively polite, neutral statements, but the message was clear: This pricipal gives a shit about the opinions of his students. After this articles were published, the situation at our school drastically changed: the student and the parents` council still only have the right to suggest things, but these are always accepted. Plus we get snow days^^ * One of my 5th grade students was recently inconsolable after the SC debates because her opponent from the other class had promised extended recess and a big screen TV in the cafeteria, whereas she would only offer small, realistic goals. I assured her that the students knew what was doable, and therefore knew which of them could be trusted. Thankfully I was right. ---- Category:Troper Tales